#FridayBookShare The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

#FridayBookShare is a game created by Shelley Wilson to help search for an ideal read.

Anyone can have a go – all you need to do is answer the following questions based on the book you are currently reading/finished reading this week and use the hashtag #FridayBookShare

First line of the book.

Recruit fans by adding the book blurb

Introduce the main character using only three words.

Delightful design (add the cover image of the book).

Audience appeal (who would enjoy reading this book?)

Your favourite line/scene.

I recently received The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson, as a gift from a stranger, through an anonymous book sharing scheme.  Many years ago I loved reading Notes from a Small Island about Bill’s first impressions of Britain, but what does he think now?

First Line – “One of the things that happens when you get older is that you discover lots of new ways to hurt yourself.”

Recruit fans by adding the book blurb

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain.Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed.

Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain’s occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. And not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas.

Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest and quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today.

Introduce the main character  –Witty, indomitable, Bill. 

Delightful Design

Audience appeal  –Anyone who enjoys reading Bryson’s humorous observations.  Anyone from Britain, anyone who has visited Britain or anyone who intends visiting.

Your favourite line/scene  –In order to become a British citizen Bryson had to pass a knowledge test, so he sent for a study guide:-

The study guide is an interesting book, nicely modest, a little vacuous at times, but with its heart in the right place.  Britain, you learn, is a country that cherishes fair play, is rather good at art and literature, values good manners, and has often shown itself to be commendably inventive, especially around things that run on steam.  The people are a generally decent lot who garden, go for walks in the country, eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on sundays (unless they are Scottish in which case they may go for haggis).  They holiday at the seaside, obey the Green Cross Code, queue patiently, vote sensibly, respect the police, venerate the monarch, and practise moderation in all things.  Occasionally they go to a public house to drink two units or fewer of good English ale and to have a game of pool or skittles. (You sometimes feel that the people who wrote the guidebook should get out more.)

 

If you want to join in, then answer the F.R.I.D.A.Y questions and use the Friday Book Share meme. Tag Shelley (@ShelleyWilson72) in, so she can read what you have added, too.